"Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance."

Jacob A. Riis said something profoundly true: "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

Stonecutter analogy

Riis has focused on one aspect of success that often eludes us - persistence. For if you examine his analogy with the stonecutter, you will see yourself there and you might have a better understanding of why some things don't work out for you in life. You hammer at your rock - your goal - and stop just short of the rock splitting in two, not realising that all your efforts gone before were working for you to achieve success. Because you could not see it, you did not believe it. But achieving success demands faith, a belief that what you are doing will work out for you, even though you cannot now see the results.

If you read last week's article on the power of persistence, you would have seen Herman Sherman's 'Code of Persistence'. He gave eight principles of persistence. They are:

I will never give up as long as I know I am right.

I will believe that all things will work out for me if I hang on until the end.

I will be courageous and undismayed in the face of odds.

I will not permit anyone to intimidate me or deter me from my goals.

I will fight to overcome all physical handicaps and setbacks.

I will try again and again and yet again to accomplish what I desire.

I will take new faith and resolution from the knowledge that all successful men and women have had to fight defeat and adversity.

I will never surrender to discouragement or despair, no matter what seeming obstacles may confront me.

If you are to fulfil your dreams, Sherman's Code of Persistence must drive you. Shakespeare said, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Read the biographies of successful men and women, consider the stories of our own Jamaican heroes, Audrey Hinchcliffe, Butch Stewart, Robert Levy, Danny Williams, Merlene Ottey, George Headley, Usain Bolt.

Monumental achievements

History rings with stories of people, who believed in their dreams and persisted until those dreams became reality. If you read Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope, you will begin to understand the monumental achievement of a black man now with a viable chance of becoming president of the United States. It all started as hope. Then it moved to faith, then to work and dogged persistence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Success calls for indefatigable persistence. Plato laboured over his 'Republic' masterpiece. He rewrote the first sentence nine different times before he was satisfied. Beethoven lost his hearing Before he composed many of his great symphonies for which he is famous. John Milton wrote Paradise Lost while totally blind, rising at 4 a.m. to fashion this epic. Franklin D. Roosevelt was struck down by polio, but he persevered. From a wheelchair, he led the free world as president of the United States. Adam Clarke laboured 40 years, writing his commentary on the Bible, while Edward Gibbon took 26 years to complete The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

It is said that Ernest Hemingway reviewed the manuscript of The Old Man and the Sea 80 times before submitting it for publication. It took Noah Webster 36 years to compile Webster's Dictionary. Albert Einstein, after years of searching for meaningful employment, formulated his astonishing theory of relativity while working as a clerk in a patent office. These all persisted, for they understood Eleanor Roosevelt's words: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Never give up!